The Oral Tradition of Jesus' Gospels

No one can possibly think that the gospels are based on records all written down at the moment Jesus said or did something. So there has to be some kind of oral tradition to begin with, and the question is, how long does the oral tradition go? The oral tradition went on for centuries. There's nobody who doubts this either because you get oral traditions about Jesus in later gospels that are not found in the New Testament. And so I don't know if it's true or not, but it's possible that Mark had written sources in front of him. One option is that he had heard everything from oral traditions that he's the first to write one down,. Second is that he